1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to apparatus for storing and ventilating cheeses, comprising shelves for carrying the cheeses which are supported at their ends by two hollow sidewalls through which air can be supplied to and discharged from the spaces between the shelves.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
An apparatus of the kind described above is known from Netherlands patent application 7702023. According to this proposal, a flow of conditioned air is forced across a certain number of cheeses, and its direction of flow is reversed from time to time. The hollow vertical walls are connected alternately to the air supply and extraction by means of a change-over valve; the hollow walls have openings to which pipes can be attached for directing the air-flow.
This arrangement has the disadvantage that the gap between the shelves lying one above another in the store has to be larger than the height of the cheeses, since an air flow of this kind cannot be directed straight at the cheeses because of the risk of local desiccation, and the pipes therefore require extra height.
Netherlands patent application 7902942 shows a cheese store in which an individual flow of conditioned air is passed over each cheese, from outlets connected directly to vertical pipes. No means for extracting the air are shown. This arrangement of vertical pipes makes removal and turning of the cheeses difficult and complicated.